MFP Weekend Indsutry Notes 9/25/09

Gathered from Print4Pay Hotel Members from around the world and a few moles in very good places!

- Hewlett Packard, responding to customer complaints, announced it will offer print drivers for its printers and MFPs so they will work with the new Apple Macintosh Snow Leopard operating system.

- Hewlett Packard claims it now has 5,000 Indigo production color systems in operation worldwide. It will also offer white liquid toner as an option in selected models.

- Hewlett Packard claims that its “Printing Payback Guarantee” promotion (where it guarantees the savings advertised after conducting a managed print services assessment) is a success, and resulted in 100 new contracts within 2 weeks of the promo launch.

- Hewlett Packard’s EDS division announced that it won an $8.1 million bid from the Department of Defense to upgrade their Health Information Management System.

- Hewlett Packard reported its last quarter’s financials for its printer/MFP division, known as IPG:
- consumer hardware units sales down 16%
- LaserJet unit sales down 42%
- Total hardware unit sales down 23%
- Color LaserJet units sales down 41%
- MFP sales down 38%
- Printer supply revenue down 13%
- Indigo page volumes up 16%

- Samsung of Korea captured 23.4% of the market for A4 sized machines in the second quarter of 2009, according to IDC. This makes Samsung the largest maker of devices that print on letter/legal size paper. Note from Art: Told ya so!, I've been harping on this for years and now Sammy has a strong foot in the door, whose business are they going to take? If the big guns dont't bring out A4 45,55,65 & 75ppm systems, Samsung will all but own this segment of the market.
Details:
- Regained the top position for first time since first quarter of 2006
- In Europe, had 35.1% marketshare for color laser MFPs and 26.9% for b/w MFPs
- Dominated Italy for b/w laser printers was 39.7%
- b/w laser MFPs = 47.7%
- color laser printers = 45.6%
- color laser MFPs = 52.3%
- IDC projects that laser engines will outperform inkjet worldwide
- Samsung plans to produce lineup of high speed, mid-to-large scale industrial printers
- Samsung’s printer/MFP division led by Y.H. Park, Senior VP

- The National Association of Quick Printers (NAQP) has selected Konica Minolta as winner of the 2009 Association Hall of Fame Award. In order to win this award:
- Demonstrated consistent customer service
- Professionalism and integrity
- Quality of products that benefit the industry (print for pay)
- Innovative products that meet current and evolving needs of customers
- Problem solving sales, service and support staff members who consistently exceed the needs and expectations of customers
- Consistently sought to advance the competitiveness of quick and small commercial printer
- “Konica Minolta Business Solutions USA has stepped up in a big way this past year to offer high quality, very competitive digital printing solutions” “Equally important, they have backed their products with first rate service.”

- Oce’ won “Must See ‘Em” awards at the PRINT 09 trade show in Chicago for the Oce’ JetStream production color inkjet system and the Oce’ VarioPrint b/w production LED system.

- Oce’ announced it will relabel a Creo print servce, and call it the Oce’ PRISMAcolorworks” for the Oce’ ColorTream 10000 rollfed production color system. Pricing unannounced.

- Barclays Capital predicts that Xerox will “make significant share repurchases next year” to boost its stock value.

- Google Corp. announced it has purchased an Expresso Book Machine for its headquarters in Mountain View, CA. Details:
- Can manufacture a paperback-bound books inline
- Top speed of 5 minutes per 300 page book
- Made by OnDemand Books, and uses a Xerox MFP as its print engine
- Google will sell the OnDemand books for $8 each

- Okidata now shipping three new desktop A4 b/w MFPs, the MB260mfp, MB280mfp and MB290mfp. Details:
- Actual maker unknown
- 100MHz processor
- 600x600dpi
- MB260mfp & MB280mfp offer GDI printing only
- MF290mfp offers PCL & PostScript print drivers
- MB280mfp and MB290mfp both have a document feeder
- All can copy/scan/fax/print
- MSRPs of $249.99, $299.99 & $399.99

- Kodak announced it has sold three NexPress S3000 production color systems to Lifetouch National School Studios in Chicago, IL. They will be used to produce school yearbooks nationwide.

- MindFireInc., maker of variable data software, announced a new option called “MarketFire”, which will allow printshops to create, track, analyze and improve cross-media marketing campaigns. Pricing unannounced.
- microsite authoring tools
- flexible rules and trigger based events
- prospect centric data view
- analytical dashboard for reporting and tracking
- Mac and PC compatible

- CPS Printing of Carlsbad, CA announced it has invested in Pageflex Storefront web-to-print software to expand its offerings.

- Xante’ of Alabama announced it received a Pantone license for its Ilumina desktop color LED printer, which is actually made by Okidata.

- Agfa of Germany announced the otrix Modular color inkjet UV production system. Details:
- top speed of 6,300 feet per hour
- rollfed system
- can supposedly match 90% of all Pantone colors
- pricing not announced

- In order to attract attention to its large booth at the recent PRINT 09 show in Chicago, Agfa setup full color, cardboard cutouts of people, to make it look like its booth was busy.

- The Illinois Attorney General’s office has agreed to join the FBI into investigating how a school in Belleville, IL ended up being sued by 7 lease companies, when it thought it only had a lease for two copiers from one leasing company. Governor French Academy claims that it leased two copiers from Kevin Welch, and now the lease companies claim it has a total of 14 copiers on lease.

- XMPie won a “Encore Worth-a-look” award at the PRINT 09 show for its uStore 3.5 web to print software solution.

- Epson is suing a company in Portland, OR, named Green Project, which collects old Epson ink cartridges, takes them to China, cracks-off their tops, refills them with ink, and brings them back to the U.S. to sell for less than new Epson cartridges.

- Cartridge World, a business headquartered in Emeryville, CA, announced that its toner and ink cartridge refilling business is up 16.3% in the poor economy. It claims that its store across the U.S. have refilled 9 million cartridges last year.

- At a recent conference of IT executives, a presenter, Robert DeMarzo of Everything Channel, asked for those in the large audience if they planned to upgrade to Microsoft Windows 7 by end of 2010, only one third raised their hands.

- UPS announced that it will launch a new web portal to allow end users to place print orders that are fulfilled by one of its 4,000 UPS Store locations. This will be the largest on-line printing network in the U.S. when up and running. For more info, visit www.theupsstore.com/print

- Adobe reported its last quarter’s financials:
- Revenue of $697 million, down from $887 million last year
- Operating income of $167 million compared with $219 million last year
- Net income of $136 million compared with $191 million last year

- Adobe announced it will acquire Omniture for $1.8 billion. The company makes Web analytics and measurement tools, so it can analyze how Website visitors interact with a site’s content.

- Kyocera announced that it has developed the world’s fastest inkjet printhead. Details:
- Named “KJ4 Series”
- Ejects up to 60,000 dots per second per nozzle
- 2,656 nozzles per head
- Up to 150 million dots ejected per printhead
- 60kHz drive frequency
- Up to 1200x1200dpi
- Printhead width of 4.25”
- unknown what inkjet printer maker will use this printhead

- Punch Graphix of Belgium announced that it has sold five of its Xeikon 8000 production color systems to Strategic Content Imaging, Inc., of Itasca, IL. Details of the 8000:
- Uses LED instead of laser
- Has 8 drums and images both sides of paper at same time (CMYK times two)
- 1200x1200dpi
- 4 bits per pixel
- 244ppm top speed full color
- 8.5 million pages per month max duty cycle
- Handles up to 16point stock
- Rollfed, up to 20.1” wide paper
- Uses PA toner technology
- SCI will use the systems for its digital book printing

- Lexmark announced it will offer an embedded version of FollowMe Printing software from Ringdale Inc. for some of its laser MFPs.

- Toshiba launched the VP-P450 color printer. Details:
- desktop device that prints passports
- laminates after printing
- uses thermal printing technology
- uses the ePassport software
- encodes IC-chips with the passport holder’s biometric data
- pricing not announced

- Polek & Polek of Fairfield, NJ announced that they are now offering generic toner that works in the Toshiba eSTUDIO 523, 603, 723 and 853 b/w MFPs.

- Document Network Technology won a copier bid from Litchfield School District in the Hillsboro, Illinois area. Details:
- Includes 3.2 million b/w copiers per year
- Winning price was $34.476 per year
- 5 year cpc lease
- 30 day cancellation clause

- Kodak announced that it sold $400 million worth of secured notes to Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. (KKR) in exchange for two seats on Kodak’s board of directors. Kodak also agreed to issue KKR warrants to purchase up to 53 million shares. The company also plans on offer $300 million of notes due in 2017 to institutional buyers.

- 5 men in Toronto, Canada were arrested by police after they were found with more than $1 million worth of inkjet and laser cartridges that were stolen from a local Lexmark warehouse. The product was on 32 skids in two separate locations.

- Two local school children, ages 10 and 11, were caught making fake $20 bills on a color copier in Pratt, West Virginia, near Charleston. The U.S. Secret Service let the boys off with a stern warning.

- Nukote International, maker of refilled printer cartridges, is suing Office Depot for $217 million for breach of contract.

-=Good Selling=-